Nobody likes a tragedy, do they? Especially not in Middle Earth. I began this book not having the slightest clue what I was getting in to (intentionally). Having the LotR and the Hobbit under my belt I thought I’d surely be ready. Maybe I was, maybe I wasn’t.
I found the land of the elves to be attractive – perhaps even more attractive that in the LotR, which is saying something. I found myself wanting to straddle a great eagle and fly into that gated city. Turin garnered my sympathies. He is, to me, perhaps the most complex character I have encountered in Tolkien. He reminds me of Strider/Aragorn, a noble-blooded, exiled outlaw.
The tragedy took me somewhat by surprise (again, not knowing anything about the book beforehand). It seemed fitting but, like all tragedies, frustrating. To spend the energy and power of mind to engage a book and then see evil prevail in the end seems tragic in itself. But perhaps that is the point. It shouldn’t be this way – not in a book, not in real life – and we know it.
The noble ones should rise above and triumph. The evil should be destroyed. But in the end of this tale, evil and good (and even the good is not completely good in itself) destroy one another. And even in evil’s defeat, the wounded dragon speaks words of trouble and slander, leading to more evil in his death than, perhaps, he did in his life.
It drives me back to the words of Sam Gamgee in the Return of the King, ‘is everything sad going to come untrue?’ Not in the short-run. Not in the days of Hurin and his children. But perhaps in the end. Who doesn’t long for that day?
I hate tragedies, yet I love that they give me hope. They make the classic fairy tale desirable. But why would the fairy tale be desirable without them? Who cares about a happy ending if we haven’t experienced the sad?
I really enjoy this book. Anything about the Eldar days seems a tragedy though, but then again so is LOTR but in a more subtle way.